Greening the Design and Construction of Healthcare FacilitiesWhat we do to our environment
Greening the Design and Construction of Healthcare Facilities
What we do to our environment, we do to ourselves, the saying goes. Nowhere is this principle played out more dramatically than in our hospitals, where doctors and nurses work in the front lines against environmental illnesses, treating patients for cancers caused by exposure to toxic materials, asthma triggered by breathing dirty air, and heat stroke brought on by heat waves made more severe by climate change.
Sadly, the connection between hospitals and illnesses does not end with treatment. Even as Healthcare professionals go to heroic lengths healing the sick among us, the very buildings in which they work stop and erase their efforts. Burning fossil fuels to power Healthcare facilities contributes to climate change, allowing disease to invade new habitats. Relying on ozone-depleting refrigerants to cool them increases the potential for skin cancer. Using mercury-based instruments to measure body temperature and blood pressure contributes to air and water pollution, increasing rates of brain damage from mercury poisoning. Furnishing interiors with materials manufactured using carcinogens (致癌物) perpetuates the spread of cancer; such materials are common even in radiation and chemotherapy treatment rooms.
There is clearly room for improvement in the performance of our Healthcare facilities. By considering the environmental and health implications of design and construction decisions, we can bring the performance of Healthcare facilities more closely in line with the industry's mission to restore and safeguard health. If we trust our doctors to "first, do no harm" as the Healthcare creed counsels, it seems only fair to expect the same of our hospitals.
The History and Future of Greening the Healthcare Industry
The connection between the Healthcare industry and the environment was illuminated in 1994, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified medical waste burning as the largest source of dioxin, considered to be the most potent human carcinogen ever manufactured. The irony of this situation inspired the formation of Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), a nonprofit organization that now boasts more than 375 member groups in 40 countries.
Another milestone in the push to green the Healthcare industry was the 1998 memorandum of understanding between AHA (the American Hospital Association) and EPA, which laid out three goals for the Healthcare industry: to eliminate mercury-containing waste, to reduce the overall volume of waste, and to identify hazardous substances for pollution-prevention opportunities. This agreement launched the nonprofit Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E), a joint project of AHA and EPA, along with HCWH and the American Nurses Association.
Within the last five years, interest in greening Healthcare has moved beyond operations to encompass the design and construction of Healthcare facilities themselves. To guide a new sustainable design category in its annual awards program, the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) published the Green Healthcare Construction Guidance Statement in January 2002. It is considered the first document to incorporate health considerations into design guidance. Noting that preventing disease is preferable to treating disease, it advises that "a precautionary and preventive approach is an appropriate basis for decisions regarding material selection, design features, mechanical systems, infrastructure, and operations and maintenance practices".
Prompted by an impending Healthcare construction boom in response to California's new seismic (有关地震的) regulations, Gail Vinori. co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin, Texas, met with a group of green building and health experts in 2003 to develop a more prescriptive set of design guideline
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